A man of Peace
by Nightheart
Summary: It's the funeral of Treize Kushrenada, but will the true meaning of his death and sacrifice be lost to the ones who wish to make his death a monument to war? Can Une stop the degradation of his memory before it destroys eveything he's worked for? Importan


Lady Une marched in front of the procession, behind the pair of standard bearers and to the fore of the empty coffin that was held on the shoulders of four ex-Treize Faction soldiers. She was dressed completly in unreleived black, the age-old color of mourning from her own culture. Her hair was down, just like how Master Trieze had always liked it, and she didn't try to fight the tears that fell from her brown eyes, unhidden by glasses.   
Once in a time not too long ago she would have fought the tears slipping down her face with all of her strength, believing them a sign of weakness. That time was past, her once sundered psyche and was complete and she was made into a whole person once more. Every facet of herself wept unashamedly for the man she'd loved and lost. Standing through the funeral was the hardest thing anyone had ever asked her to do. It would have been funny in an ironic way but Une no longer saw the value of the universes cruel sense of humor.  
The funeral taking place at the moment was simply for show. There was no body. Une had seen to his remains personally, just as she had seen to almost everything else of his, up to and including his rose-scented bath oils. His body had been pulled from the wreckage and cremated. She had scattered his ashes from her personal flyer into the air and the vaccum between Earth and Space. She'd felt it appropriate, his remains floating forever in the places he'd loved so much and tried unto his last breath to reconcile and protect. There would be peace now, and his spirit would watch over the Earth Sphere (Earth Sphere includes both Earth and the Colonies) finding rest and comfort at last in the peace that he had given his life to attain, and Une would give her life to maitaining it. She would give her life to ensuring that Treize's life had not been wasted and that his ideals were understood and embraced in the hearts of the masses.  
Treize had not been a follower of any one kind of religion so Une had hired a Foundationalist (one who incorporated the foundations and universal truths of all religions into their search for truth) to perform the ceremony. She had requested and been granted the right to say a few words at the end of the ceremony, before his empty coffin was laid into the ground, beside the empty grave of that of his close friend and once enemy Milliardo Peacecraft.  
It's funny, I've neve seen Miss Relena visit her Brother's grave once since he was laid to rest. I don't recall her ever going to the funeral either, Une thought irrelevently as she watched the ceremony roll by in it's traditional monotony. The funeral was not neccessary, and the huge parading of his body through the streets ha been offensive in Ladt Une's eyes.   
No one else knew Treize like she did, and she was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that the public spectacle they'd made of his last rites was not something His Excellency Master Treize would have wanted. In fact, Une could recall reading in a missive that his last wish was to have his remains disposed of, exactly as she had disposed them, and that he be allowed to fade into history and not reincarnate old rivalries and feuds among the people and soldiers.   
However the Treize faction had demanded that they have a funeral for their fallen general, and Une had not been in a position to argue with them at the time. More acurately, she had not been in a state to argue with them. When she had reached the safety and privacy of her quarters she had collapsed into a fit of greiving that had left feeling hollow and exhausted. She had fasted for five days, spending the time in darkness with only a candle to light her way, meditating and praying in her own fashion. Even Sally Po had stopped by to deliver her proffessional opinion that such an extended period of greiving and fasting was not at all healthy. The good doctor had been sent away, like all the others. Une had only come out when they searchers announced to her (and only to her) the recovery of his body.  
Une had said her goodbyes then, but she could respect the need of others to have their own closure. But this... This was not what Treize would have wanted, he beleived that a true soldiers most honorable burial was on the battlefeild. This blaintant flouting of his wishes disturbed the Lady Une and undermined the message that Treize had been striving for. He would not wish that his death and mortal coil become a monument to war.  
And since he could not correct the misapprehentions being made by his men, then Une would have to do it in Treize's name. She would make sure that the message Treize had wanted to send with his death and the ideals he'd lived and loved would survive intact. And that the people would realize the ideals he'd led others to struggle for.  
"From the stars we emerged and to the stars we return, from now unto eternity. We herby commit this body to the deep..."  
Une watched the empty coffin being lowered into the ground.  
"All of you here now know this man as His Excellency Treize Kushrenada. Aristocrat and war hero, leader of thousands. He lived his life with bravery in every single word and deed, he commited himself to his positions and OZ flourished under his rule. All of you here know His Excellency...the soldier. There are few who could say that they knew Master Treize as the man he was. As His Excellency he was revered and celebrated for the battles he fought and for the wars he won, but few knew or have remembered on this occasion that he was a man who saw the beauty ond sorrow of a battlefeild. In this disply you have honored his valor and courage, but have any of you honored his ideals? Treize Kushrenada, loved the hearts that were willing to fight, loved the souls that could see the battle for what it truly was. Not the triumph of the one over the other, not the triumph of the weak over the strong, but the passionate expression of two ideals and the growth of new and better strength. Master Treize believed in the beauty and sorrow of a battle feild, of the hearts and souls of those who would stand and fight not only with weapons but with hearts true and full of hope for the future, and he believed above all in the future. We stand here so that we may remember his past deeds and glories, but we need not stand here on this day to remember him, we will remember him with every effort we make to strive to make peice and to hold onto it with all our might. We build the future, shape it with our thoughts and words, deeds and actions. Let the ideals that this man sacrificed so much for live on in our hearts and manifest itself in our actions as we pave the path to a future peace. So now I implor you, all of you... Let His Excellency Treize Kushrenada not be remembered as the Commander of OZ, who led thousands in a final war between Earth and Space. Let him be remembered as the man he was, a man of peace. Let us exchange the past for the future and live out the ideals he deid to realize in our hearts, for he was, despite his miliary genius, at heart a man of peace."  
Lady Une stepped back from the podium. She didn't know where those eloquent words had come from, perhaps the spirit of Treize had whispered them in her ear so that she might better guide the world down the path of his ideals.  
Good-bye my love, she thought as her tears fll onto the recently upturned earth. I will fight to maintain this peace you have wrought in your own blood in all the ways that I know how. This is the last and final thing that I know to do for you. I will have to step beyond your great shadow to do it, but I think that I am ready for he starlight now.  
Tomorrow she would talk to the president...But what to call her idea...? Hmmm...  
Preventors?  
  
The End.  
  
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Authors Note:  
At last! A good Treize and Une fic! I've bee trying for weeks to write one, but the words come slowly to me. This one flew ou of my keyboard as if it had wings! I've got another one that I'm about a fifth of the way through, it's a lot longer...  
Anyways...I wanted to announce to those who have mentioned it, that my seventh chapter is three fourths of the way finished already. Sorry about chapter six, by the way, the reason it took so long was that...dopey me...it's been done for well over two weeks now but I forgot to post it! Sorry about that. I took a small hiatus from writing solely on the pern series to work on a few one-shots I've been thinking about. I promise you guys wont be waiting for too much longer. It'll be another five days tops! (at the latest!) Until then, just sit tight and read whatever I post for ya! All the best!  
~Nightheart.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing, there, I said it... You an all go bac to your homes, there's nothing more to see. 


End file.
